Well, at least the Mariners left St. Louis with a victory. You can read about it right here in the game story from the freelancer we hired so Larry Stone could work on a special project for us.

So, the Mariners failed to win a series on this trip, dropping three of four in Texas, and two of three in San Diego and St. Louis. They have failed to score more than four runs in 15 straight games and that should give you some indication — no matter how much you believe players have underperformed this season — that there are fundamental flaws in this offense.

When players keep “underperforming” to this degree, you have to assume some of them are actually “performing” — just not at the level you (or a projection system) may have overestimated from the start. Remember, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. And at some point, we have to question whether the lack of true power hitters in this lineup is impacting what the projection systems tell us a player “should” be doing performance-wise.

This is an underexplored area of sabermetrics. The whole “fear factor” presence of one or two big bat guys in a lineup and how it changes the way other hitters are pitched to. I’ve spoken to ballplayers about this before. Some swear by it, while others insist that being “protected” in a lineup has no bearing on the pitches they see.

Still, given how “off” the projections on these Mariners have been, it might at least merit further study.

But enough of that. On to Jason Vargas.

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